Detransitioning: The Politics of Categorization and Gender Outside the Binary

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Gender Nonconformity and Institutional Constraints

Abstract

Although the relationship between medicalization and transness is well established within existing research, little work has been done on detransitioning, or the practice of pausing or reversing gender transitions. In addition to neglecting the experiences of a vulnerable group of people, this has the effect introducing a survivorship bias into the literature. By interrogating the fact that not all gender transitions are permanent, we can trouble any easy divide between trans and cis as categories. In this paper, I ask how medical care shapes the construction of the detransitioning subject. To inductively explore this question, I turn to the largest community of people who have detransitioned, the Subreddit r/detrans, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. My preliminary findings are that community members disagreed about whether they were objects upon which medical care was practiced, or subjects who chose medical care. Their positioning with regards to the medical system was related to their position in regard to transness, as some parts of the community actively distanced themselves from the concept of “trans” while others saw themselves as relatively similar to trans people. Finally, I find evidence for continuities of power between man/woman and cis/trans binaries. In other words, the inequalities detransitioning people experience under a man/woman gender binary are maintained despite our shift towards a cis/trans gender binary. Taken together, these findings shed light on experiences of gender non-conformity that are often silenced, as well as guide us towards interrogating “transition” as a practice rather than a singular act or accomplishment.

Author

• Rae Willis-Conger, University of California-Berkeley